This book was a bit spooky to read. It is so easy to manipulate numbers and Hurtig presents so many numbers that are opposite to what we are always told that you wonder who is playing with them. He makes a lot of important points regarding our dependence on the US and how our Canadian social policy is slowly erroding to turn us into a US state. It is a very important book to read and to help us realize that we need to do something to preserve our Canada. Reading it several years after it came out was interesting as he spends a few pages blasting Harper and saying if he ever becomes PM we are in for it. I will have to look around to see if Hurtig has published any follow up articles on the subject :) ( )

Wikipedia in English (1)

Is it all over for Canada? There are a number of thoughtful people who think so. Mel Hurtig, however, believes there is still a chance to reassert Canadian independence. But first, Canadians need to understand how much has been lost. Our politicians are not telling us. Our business leaders certainly are not telling us. And our media definitely are not telling us. The border dividing Canada and the United States has never been more fragile. Canada is vanishing. The evidence is available to those who know where to look for it. It can be found in reports published by Statistics Canada, the OECD, the World Bank, the United Nations and its affiliated organizations, and by a variety of research organizations including the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

In characteristically pungent prose, Mel Hurtig reveals the truth about health care, the banks, taxation, newspaper conglomerates, political funding, social spending, decentralization, privatization, globalization, sovereignty, competitiveness, Americanization, the war on drugs, corporate concentration, and the quality of life in Canada. He concludes with chapters on the concentration of ownership in the Canadian media, the need for electoral and parliamentary reform, the necessity of asserting Canadian sovereignty, and a final, positive chapter entitled “The Good Country.”